John F. Kennedy was assassinated 60 years ago: That makes him immortal to this day

Three shots. A dead US president. A horrified world. The assassination of John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was one of the most spectacular crimes of the 20th century. Even 60 years later, the attack still poses a mystery.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, accompanied by his wife Jacqueline Bouvier-Kennedy (1929-1994) and his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), flies from Texas to Dallas on Air Force One. Kennedy is campaigning for a second term in the White House.

“Welcome to Dallas, Mr. President!”

At that time, Dallas was considered extremely conservative and a stronghold of the Republicans. The population viewed the Democrat Kennedy more than skeptically. A leaflet in the form of a wanted poster was circulating in which the president was wanted “for high treason”. And the Dallas Morning News published a full-page obituary with the headline “Welcome to Dallas, Mr. President!”

The text makes outrageous accusations: Kennedy was responsible for the incarceration, expulsion and persecution of thousands of Cubans. The government had allied itself with US communists and was selling food to North Vietnam to rebels who would shoot US military advisers. The police chief speaks on the TV channel NBC of the “aggressive mood in the city” and warns of riots.

The local police have deployed 365 officers to protect the head of state, as well as 28 Secret Service agents from Washington. However, the roofs of the high-rise buildings along the route that the presidential convoy is supposed to travel are not secured, as was the case in Tampa, Florida, which Kennedy visited a few days earlier.

He himself knows the security gaps, but remains calm. “If someone really wanted to shoot the President of the United States, it wouldn’t be a difficult job: one would just have to go up a tall building one day with a rifle with a telescopic sight; no one could do anything about such an attack,” said JFK on the morning of that day November 22nd to his assistant Kenneth O’Donnell (1924-1977).

John F. Kennedy’s journey to his death

The presidential plane lands in Dallas at 11:38 a.m. local time. The city has a subtropical climate and it is warm despite November, so the Kennedys move into a six-seat Lincoln Continental X-100 convertible. JFK and Jackie sit in the back, Texas Governor John Connally (1917-1993) and his wife Nellie (1919-2006) sit in front of them. The driver and passenger are from the Secret Service.

200,000 people stand on the side of the road as the convoy drives through Dallas at walking pace. Most people applaud the charismatic president, especially his charming wife. Nellie Connally turns to Kennedy and says, “You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.” JFK replies with a smile: “No, you can’t say that.” These are his last words.

At 12:30 p.m., three gunshots were fired within 8.5 seconds near Elm Street. According to the Warren Commission, which is investigating the circumstances of the attack on behalf of the White House, they were fired from the fifth floor of a textbook publishing house.

The first bullet misses the target, the second penetrates Kennedy’s back from behind, exits at his neck when he knots his tie, hits Connally, who was sitting in front of him, in the back, penetrates his chest and his right wrist and finally pierces his left thigh . The astonishing trajectory of the bullet, based on the Warren Commission, was later called the “Magic Bullet” by critics. The question is still being discussed today: How can a single bullet injure two people in such different places?

The third bullet penetrates the back of the president’s head, an absolutely fatal injury.

Was it really Lee Harvey Oswald?

80 minutes after the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963), a former Marine, is arrested in a cinema. He had recently shot patrolman JD Tippit. Now it turns out: Oswald is a casual worker in the textbook publishing house where the shooting took place. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a telescopic sight, which is found in a window on the 5th floor of the building next to three empty cartridge cases, belongs to him; his handprint is on the weapon. Ballistic examinations show that the “Magic Bullet” was fired from this rifle.

Former Marine Oswald is known to have lived in Moscow for over two years, married there and applied for Soviet citizenship. The CIA and FBI have created thick files on the Marxist madhead. He is also said to have traveled to Mexico just a few weeks before the attack and met KGB agent Valeriy Kostikov at the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. This man works for the 13th Department of the Soviet Secret Service, which was also responsible for assassinations.

Oswald denies Kennedy’s murder or involvement in the crime and explains that he should be made a “scapegoat”. Two days after the Kennedy assassination, Oswald was shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby (1911-1967) while being transferred to the state prison in Dallas – even though the then FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) had warned the investigators in Dallas beforehand that the assassin’s life was in danger.

Jack Ruby is known to have close contacts with the Mafia and at times worked as an informant for the FBI. He is sentenced to death for Oswald’s murder. The verdict of March 14, 1964 was overturned two years later, a new trial was scheduled for February 1967 in Wichita Falls, but before that, Ruby died of lung cancer at the age of 55.

These adverse circumstances do not silence the doubts about the findings of the official Warren Commission, according to which Oswald is still considered the sole perpetrator, and fuel rumors of conspiracies against Kennedy. There are essentially three different theories circulating:

1. The CIA conspiracy: According to this, the US secret service was involved in the JFK assassination attempt. Kennedy and the CIA had been enemies of each other since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Cuban exiles were supposed to overthrow Fidel Castro (1926-2016) in 1961 with CIA support. The operation failed and became a foreign policy fiasco for the USA. Kennedy threatened that he would “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the four winds.”

2. The Communist Conspiracy: It insinuates that the Soviets wanted to eliminate Kennedy in order to gain geopolitical advantages. Their motive: revenge for the humiliation suffered in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the Soviets had to withdraw their missiles stationed there. Evidence for this theory: Oswald was an avowed Marxist and had contacts with the KGB even after his stay in the USSR.

3. The Mafia Conspiracy: According to this theory, Kennedy himself is said to have had connections to the underworld. A mafia boss donated to him during the 1960 presidential election campaign. In addition, the mafia would have joined forces with the CIA to overthrow Castro. Later, the Kennedy administration launched a rigorous campaign against organized crime. Did the mafia feel betrayed? Is that why she ordered JFK’s assassination?

New theory 60 years after the murder

Further doubts about the official account of the attack arose recently when a book by former Secret Service agent Paul Landis (88) was published in October. He was responsible for protecting the First Lady and had witnessed the murder at close range on November 22, 1963. He claims to have found a bullet next to JFK’s seat, which he believes fell out of his body when Kennedy was being transported.

This means that the Warren assumption about the “magical bullet” that injured Kennedy and Connally cannot be correct. So a fourth shot must have been fired. Fired by a second gunman in some bushes to the side? Once again there is a lot of grist for the conspiracy theorists’ mill – with a side effect: the charismatic John F. Kennedy, whose political achievements as president are quite controversial, has become the immortal, outshining myth of US history.