JFK Assassination Files

## The Mainstream Narrative

The Warren Commission (1964) concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated President Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository using a Carcano rifle. Jack Ruby then killed Oswald two days later. This "lone gunman" theory became official history, endorsed by subsequent government reviews and most mainstream historians.

## What's Been Under-Reported

The 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) reached a dramatically different conclusion: Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy," citing acoustic evidence suggesting a second shooter from the grassy knoll. This finding received far less public attention than the Warren Report. Additionally, the CIA's extensive monitoring of Oswald before the assassination, his mysterious travels to Mexico City weeks before Dallas, and agency ties to anti-Castro operations remained obscured for decades.

The JFK Records Act (1992) mandated release of all assassination documents by 2017, yet thousands remain classified. In 2021-2022, both Trump and Biden administrations continued withholding files, citing "national security" concerns—sixty years after the event. The National Archives confirms over 4,000 documents remain partially or fully redacted, primarily CIA and FBI materials.

## Credible Dissenting Voices

Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht and numerous ballistics experts have challenged the "single bullet theory" (one bullet causing seven wounds in Kennedy and Governor Connally). The acoustics evidence, though later disputed, was never definitively refuted. Former Senate Intelligence Committee investigators have questioned the thoroughness of the Warren Commission's examination of intelligence agency connections.

## Follow the Money and Power

The assassination occurred amid Cold War tensions, the CIA's anti-Castro operations (including Mafia collaboration), FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's animosity toward the Kennedys, and Kennedy's conflicts with military leaders over Vietnam and Cuba policy. Oswald's peculiar background—Marine defector to USSR, return with Soviet wife, connections to both pro- and anti-Castro groups—suggests possible intelligence involvement that remains unexplored.

## Open Questions

Why do documents remain classified after six decades? What do CIA files on Oswald's Mexico City activities contain? Why were Kennedy's autopsy photographs and brain tissue handled irregularly? Why did the Secret Service destroy key records? These questions persist not from conspiracy theorizing, but from documented gaps in the official record.