Jefferson Morley: “The people behind JFK’s murder had impunity”

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For many, the Executive Order issued last month by President Donald Trump to declassify and release the remaining records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not that interesting or important. There’s little evidence to support the conspiracy theories that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed former President John F. Kennedy, say journalists and historians. Oswald was a Left-wing extremist who had strong rifle skills from his time in the military. He could have shot Kennedy from the book depository behind the former president. Neither the investigation of the murder by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren nor any other in the 60 years since has produced evidence that can’t be explained.

In truth, there are significant problems with the conventional explanation of Kennedy’s assassination, and understanding what happened is essential to protecting America’s democratic system, which assassinations, particularly ones that may have involved US government officials and agencies, undermine. There is evidence that Oswald didn’t hate and rather admired Kennedy, particularly for what he had done for civil rights. And if Oswald had been motivated by politics to kill Kennedy, why would he have denied it when caught, claiming to be a “patsy,” a person set up to take the blame for a crime they didn’t commit? If no other shooters were involved, then why does the famous Zapruder film of the assassination show Kennedy being shot in the front of the head at an angle Oswald did not have? And why did a man tied to the criminal underworld kill Oswald two days after the Kennedy assassination?