08-01-2013, 02:36 PM
John F. Kennedy’s Assassination
1John F. Kennedy’s.docx (Size: 20.52 KB / Downloads: 36)
Forty-nine years ago one of the bravest Presidents’ that the United States has ever known was inexplicably murdered for his heroic actions. His name was John F. Kennedy and he was killed on November 22, 1963during a motorcade in Dallas, Texas while campaigning to be re-elected for another term. According to my grandmother the day started just as any other;adults went to work and children went to school. Everything was perfectly fine. When it came time for the motorcade in Dallas everyone that could not attend the event themselves watch the television broadcast or listened in on their radios at home. Everyone was so excited to see the man who prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis and hear his speech to be reelected, however not a single person knew what would soon happen. The sound of three loud gunshots blasted through everyone’s ears. Then the public noticed the President was shot right in front of them. My grandmother told me how shocked everyone was to see this terrible event. People ran away in fear, others stayed and screamed until their throats were sore, and people all around the country were evacuated from their place of work and the schools which their children were attending. Everyone was in mass hysteria. The government wanted all citizens to stay inside their homes. Jobs and stores were also closed out of fear.
In 1976, the US Senate ordered a fresh inquiry into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. People that had been involved in the original Warren Commission investigations were asked to make fresh statements. The FBI and the CIA were persuaded to release more of their documents on Lee Harvey Oswald, the supposed man that murdered J.F.K. New lines of questions were opened and individuals who had not given their personal evidence were talkedinto coming forward. Of course pieces of evidence such as photos and sound recordings were prone to scientific analysis using the newest technology to discover what really might have happened on the day of J.F.K.’s murder. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (or the HSCA) completed the investigation in 1979 and they finally came to the verdict that Lee Harvey Oswald did in fact fire three shots at Kennedy, however only one hit and killed the president. A fourth shot was fired from the small grassy hill that was nearby, which was contradictory to the previous statement thatthe Warren Commissionprinted 16 years earlier. The conclusionthey came to was that John Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.
The investigation was ordered directly after the assassinations of the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy’s brother Robert Kennedy, in 1968. Of course these incidents aroused huge suspicion and the American public began to question why so many important U.S. figures had been assassinated within the span of five years, when in the past this type of incident had been extremely rare. The House Select Committee on Assassinations was interested in looking into the possibility that the assassinations were connected to each other. At the time there was also an increasing awareness of corruption and scandal within the government. In 1974 the Watergate Scandal involving President Nixon had painfully shown that the United States government was not as honest and true as the public had thought it was. As a result of this, people started questioning the behavior of the government, and how much information it was holding back from its people. This is most likely why the American people became more receptive and attracted to the idea of a conspiracy being the cause of Kennedy's death.
The public became even more interested in the Kennedy assassination after books such as Rush to Judgment [by Mark Lane] and Inquest[by Edward Jay Epstein] began to come off the press. In a really short time they became best sellers and played a large role in raising awareness regarding the assassination. As a result people started to questionthe accusations of the government more and theories began to rise up that other people or organizations were involved in Kennedy's assassination than previously thought. As people started to become aware of the events surrounding the assassination moreand more people blamed the Dallas police as being incapable of handling the entire investigation. They have proven to be extremely unorganized in their efforts to record, document and investigate the John F. Kennedy’s murder. The fact that interviews had not been recorded was one of the reasons why there was so much confusion during the trial. The only excuse that the Dallas police were able to come up with was that they couldn't find a tape recorder that did not even exist.