The Kennedy Assination: A Conspiracy? Essay -- American Presidents, JF

What reasons did the HSCA have in 1979 for suggesting that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy in 1963? In 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations began to reinvestigate the events at the assassination of JFK. A report was published by the committee in 1979 stating that there was a probable conspiracy surrounding Kennedy’s death, contradicting the Warren Commission’s theory. However, the HSCA could not prove that someone other than Oswald may have assassinated the president. What the HSCA could do however, was to prove that there were flaws in the evidence that the Warren Commission used to formulate their theory about Oswald being the lone assassin of JFK. A major part to the Warren Commission’s theory was the three bullet idea, in which the first bullet supposedly passed through Kennedy’s neck and then caused Governor Connally’s three wounds in the chest, wrist and thigh. The bullet that did this damage, often referred to as the â€Å"magic† bullet, was later found on Connally’s stretcher, with no trace of blood and almost fully in tact. Attempts that have been made to recreate this situation have proved that it was almost impossible that the bullet could have, firstly, changed direction so many times to make Kennedy and Connally’s wounds and, secondly, remained so undamaged after passing through blood, bone and human tissue. The Zapruder film of the assassination also shows that there were two seconds between Kennedy and Connally being hit, indicating that they were struck by two different bullets. Governor Connally backed this up by saying that he heard a gun shot and then had time to turn a round to see where the gun shot came from, before getting hit himself. Connally also said that he was almost cer... ...e, Lynden Johnson became president after JFK’s assassination, so his motive to murder JFK would have been his desire to rule America. It is also known that the Mafia saw Johnson as a much better â€Å"friend in the Whitehouse† than JFK, which meant that Johnson could have planned JFK’s assassination with the help of Mafia. However, this is just a hypothesis and cannot be proved, like the HSCA found out when they uncovered the amount of different conspiracies that there could have been surrounding Kennedy’s death. There were too many conspiracies that couldn’t be proved which meant that the HSCA could not pinpoint who exactly did murder JFK. To conclude, judging by the flaws in the Warren Commission’s theory and the amount of people that could have benefitted from Kennedy’s death, the HSCA had good reasons to suggest that JFK could have been the victim of a conspiracy.