This research examines the controversy surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The research will set forth issue fronts that emerged at the time of the incident and that have persisted unresolved since that time, and then discuss how and why such dramatically divergent assessments of the assassination have formed, with a view toward identifying which assessment has the most credence.
The murder of JFK in Dallas fostered intense national desire to assign blame for the crime and bring those responsible to justice. One view of the assassination was articulated in detail in the 1964 Warren Commission Report (WCR) published pursuant to Executive Order No. 11130 of November 29, 1963, that "all the facts and circumstances surrounding the assassination and the subsequent killing of the alleged assassin" be evaluated. Another view is that the WCR by no means answered the case, that an impartial review of the physical evidence dramatically contradicted the report's conclusions, and that, if Oswald was guilty of the murder at all, he was part of a conspiracy.
The essential facts of what came to be called the official story were that JFK was shot in downtown Dallas's Dealey Plaza from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository by an employee named Lee Harvey Oswald. Also shot was Texas Governor John Connally, who was seated in the front seat of JFK's motorcade convertible, with JFK in the rear seat. JFK and Connally were transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. One medical team attempted, without success, to save his life; Connally survived his wound. Oswald, who fled the scene, left behind the murder weapon, a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, from which three bullets had been shot, their cartridge casings scattered near the depository's sixth-floor window. During his 45-minute flight from the depository, Oswald had encountered and shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippi...