ASSASSINATION

One of the most dramatic and pervading images of the Sixties will always be the assassination of President John Kennedy on 22 November 1963, at the midpoint between the end of Project Mercury and the first unmanned flight of Gemini. Perhaps more than any other event, it marked a pivotal change in the political and social climate of the period. Perhaps, had it not occurred, co-operation between the United States and the Soviet Union in space and on the ground may have been cultivated. Maybe the escalation of involvement and conflict in Vietnam could have been averted. An entirely different Sixties could have resulted.

Kennedy had been in Texas for several days and, tanned and wearing sunglasses, had visited and been photographed at NASA’s new Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), near Houston, shortly before his murder. His decision to visit Dallas and tour the streets in an open-topped motorcade on 22 November had come about in the hope that it would generate support for his 1964 re-election campaign and help mend political fences in a state just barely won three years before.

The plan for that fateful day called for Kennedy’s motorcade to travel from Love Field airport, through downtown Dallas – including Dealey Plaza, where the assassination would occur – and would terminate at the Dallas Trade Mart, where he was to deliver a speech. Shortly before 12:30 pm Central Standard Time, the motorcade entered Dealey Plaza and Kennedy acknowledged a comment from Nellie Connally, the wife of the Texan governor, that “you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you’’. Indeed, all around him, adoring crowds thronged the streets.

As the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository, the first crack of a rifle sounded from one of its upper windows. There was very little reaction to the opening shot, with many witnesses believing that they had heard nothing more than a firecracker or an engine backfiring. Kennedy and Governor John Connally turned abruptly, with the latter being the first in the presidential limousine to recognise the sound for what it was. However, he had no time to respond. According to the Warren Commission, which investigated the case throughout 1964, a shot entered Kennedy’s upper back and exited through his throat, causing him to clench his fists to his neck. The same bullet hit Connally’s back, chest, right wrist and left thigh.

The third and final shot, captured by a number of professional and amateur photographers, caused a fist-sized hole to explode from the side of the president’s head, spraying the interior of the limousine and showering a motorcycle officer with blood and brain tissue. First Lady Jackie Kennedy frantically clambered onto the back of the limousine; Secret Service agent Clint Hill, close by, thought she was reaching for something, perhaps part of the president’s skull, and pushed her back into her seat. Hill kept Mrs Kennedy seated and clung to the car as it raced away in the direction of Parkland Memorial Hospital.

John Connally, though critically injured, survived, but Kennedy arrived in the Parkland trauma room in a moribund condition and was declared dead by Dr George Burkley at 1:00 pm. No chance ever existed to save the president’s life, the third bullet having caused a fatal head wound. Indeed, a priest who administered the last rites told the New York Times that Kennedy was dead on arrival. An hour later, following a confrontation between Dallas police and Secret Service agents, the president’s body was removed from Parkland and driven to Air Force One, from whence it was flown to Washington, DC. Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson, also aboard Air Force One, was sworn-in as President at 2:38 pm.

One of Johnson’s earliest official acts was the establishment of the so-called ‘Warren Commission’ to investigate the president’s death. Chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the very man who had sworn Kennedy into office, the commission presented its report to Johnson in September 1964. It found no persuasive evidence

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of a domestic or foreign conspiracy and identified Lee Harvey Oswald, located on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, as the killer. It concluded that both Oswald and his own murderer, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, had operated alone and without external involvement.

Immediately after the publication of the Warren Commission’s report, doubts surfaced over its findings and conclusions. Although initially greeted with widespread support by the public, a 1966 Gallup poll suggested that inconsistencies remained. An official investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassina­tions in 1976-79 concluded that Oswald probably shot Kennedy as part of a wider conspiracy and, over the years, countless theories have emerged, placing the blame on Fidel Castro, the anti-Castro Cuban community, the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA, the masonic order, the Soviets and others. An ABC News poll in 2003 concluded that 70 per cent of respondents felt that the assassination was the result of a broader plot, although no agreement could be reached on what outside parties may have been involved. Kennedy’s death will perhaps remain one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the modern era.