Hundreds Gather to Remember John F. Kennedy, on 45th Anniversary of Assassination

Related subjects: Congressional Oversight, U.S. History, U.S. Politics

22 November 2008 :: staff

According to the Associated Press, around 500 people gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, to honor President John F. Kennedy, exactly 45 years after he was assassinated there. The nature of the killing has been in doubt from the moment it was carried out, and the official history of a lone gunman, one Lee Harvey Oswald, has been disputed by independent investigators, a New Orleans prosecutor, numerous conspiracy theorists, Oswald himself initially, the US Congress and the Oscar-winning film, JFK, by Oliver Stone.

The Warren Commission, named for then Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, investigated the case, and has long been criticized for missing evidence and not questioning irregularities in the autopsy record and coroner’s report. Among the lead investigators was Gerald Ford, later to become the only US president not elected, when Richard Nixon, defeated by Kennedy in 1960, appointed him to replace his disgraced vice-president, then resigned himself.

The US Congress would explore a number of theories attacking the Warren report’s much-maligned “magic bullet” theory, which posited that an incredible number of injuries resulted from one single bullet, out of three fired by Oswald —one of the two striking Kennedy—, with the first of the three known to have missed entirely. The House Select Committee on Assassinations found in 1979 that it was likely a conspiracy including Oswald that was responsible for the death of Pres. Kennedy, 16 years earlier. To date, there has been no official federal investigation of that conspiracy.

According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, the conspiracy was likely not linked to the FBI, CIA or Secret Service, or the governments of Cuba or the Soviet Union, but the supposed conspirators were not named, and conclusive demonstrations against the theories accusing these groups were not made public. Given the findings of the House committee, the government’s position regarding the assassination leaves the killing at least in part unresolved.

45 years later, a routine Google search for the president’s initials turns up a host of videos exploring the historical record in greater or lesser depth, showing the key amateur film footage by Abraham Zapruder —which shows the exact moment of impact of the fatal shot—, footage illustrating security failures, and alleging a wide variety of conspiracy theories involving a diverse range of potential conspirators.

In 2003, 40 years after the assassination, ABC News ran a special report —criticized by many observers— in which then news chief Peter Jennings asserted that “there has never been any credible evidence” to suggest a conspiracy. Numerous response videos and critiques have shown how the ABC report cut footage from original press conferences that contradicted Jennings’ claims about the evidence known from the first hours after the president was killed.

Two days after the assassination, the great British-American BBC correspondent Alistair Cooke, wrote that he couldn’t recall “a time, certainly in the last thirty years, when the people everywhere around you were so quiet, so tired-looking, and for all their variety of shape and colour and character so plainly the victims of a huge and bitter disappointment.” Cooke elaborated on the reasons for which Kennedy had transcended his political party and agenda and become a symbol of national aspirations.

During the Cuban missile crisis, it is now well known, Kennedy stood virtually alone among his team of most trusted advisors, with only the support of his brother, in refusing to launch a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union. That quiet principle may have saved the nation and the world from nuclear holocaust. Cooke wrote that in that Kennedy exhibited “the best sort of courage, which is the courage to face the worst and take a quiet stand.”

As a journalist attuned to the tides of culture and meaning running through the actions of a people, day by day, Cooke observed that “along with the sorrow, there is a desperate and howling note over the land. We may pray on our knees, but when we get up from them, we cry with the poet:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Fully 45 years after the death of Pres. John F. Kennedy, the most significant evidence from the day of the assassination itself has yet to be tied to an actual investigation and prosecution. Oswald was never prosecuted, but was murdered within days of the killing. The US justice system has never proven guilt beyond reasonable doubt for any accused individual. Many suspect that responsibility for Kennedy’s death will remain a mystery, indefinitely —even assuming Oswald was involved—, due to the amount of time that has passed and the lack of political will in Washington, DC, to re-open the case.