Was JFK's Assassination a Conspiracy?

I remember when I first heard that our president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated on November 22, 1963. I was 15 years old, living at Oakwood Boarding School on scholarship in Poughkeepsie, New York, and attending a somber assembly where the headmaster, Thomas Purdy, announced the news. I remember feeling numb, beyond sorrow. Such a thing had never happened in my lifetime before. It was to happen again, and then again, when JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated, and then again, when Martin Luther King was assassinated.

In the slow-motion videotape of Kennedy's assassination, it seems clear to me that he was shot twice. Jacqueline Kennedy leaned toward him in a solicitous way when he was shot the first time. JFK reached toward his neck while his head was still intact. Simultaneously with the second shot, his head exploded and Mrs. Kennedy scrambled over the back of the car to retrieve the top of his head.

At Cornell University, the Committee to Reinvestigate the Assassination of John F. Kennedy gave a speech with videotaped evidence. The committee consisted of young men, and they looked very scared. They pointed to the G-men standing in the audience, leaning against pillars in the room. The FBI men identified by the committee were white, big, and menacing looking. They didn’t blink when they were called out. They didn’t change their expressions.

The committee showed videotape of Dallas police officers dressed in Dallas police uniforms who were never seen before the day that Kennedy was assassinated or afterward. They were identified as Cubans involved in the Bay of Pigs operation.

Wouldn’t it be bizarre if Ted Cruz’s father’s connection to that fatal day was the one of the few truths Donald Trump ever told? It’s just a wild guess because Trump rarely tells the truth, but he does have connections to the Mafia, which might have connections to the JFK assassination.

After the presentation, I sent a $3.00 check to the Committee to Reinvestigate the Assassination of John F. Kennedy at its address in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t much, but it was a token of my esteem and a wish to help the committee. They were brave, they were scared, but they came and gave a valuable presentation.

The check was never cashed. My roommate’s mail was slashed open for two weeks from inside the post office (she had a post office box). My mail was slashed open outside our apartment.

Years earlier, probably in 1959, I saw Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate parking lot when my family and I were visiting Washington, D.C. We had relatives who worked for the government. Uncle Dick worked for NASA as an aeronautical and space engineer (he helped balance John Glenn’s space capsule) and Uncle Phil was the under-secretary of education.

“Look, kids! There’s the next president of the United States!” my mother cried out. It was a sunny day. The handsome young senator, his reddish brown hair waving in the wind, smiled and blushed.

The fact that the CIA is still insisting that records of his death be held back for six months means his assassination was a conspiracy, just as the Committee to Reinvestigate the Assassination of John F. Kennedy said it was. After 54 years, what other reason could there be? I don’t buy the CIA’s excuse that, according to Trump, "national security, foreign affairs concerns, and law enforcement" are legitimate reasons to redact the documents and withhold others.

In a three-page memo, former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover wrote, "The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. [Nicholas] Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that [Lee Harvey] Oswald is the real assassin."

Why must the public believe that? The Warren Commission confirmed Oswald as the lone assassin, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. John McCone, then CIA chief, withheld critical information from the Warren Commission. He instructed underlings to answer questions passively, reactively, and selectively. There are still thousands of documents concerning the assassination that have not been released. After 54 years, one has to ask, why not? The answer suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of government, including the CIA and the FBI, and that both agencies still want to keep that information secret.