On Friday, Nov 22nd, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America's 35th president, was assassinated. Three shots were fired. One hit Texas governor John Connally, the other two hit Kennedy. The second shot was fatal, damaging his brain and his skull (Waggoner 8). This was not the first time that a United States President had been assassinated, but still rocked the world nonetheless. Why did it happen? Who did it? Those two questions are still being asked today. Although the Lone Assassin theory is as the official truth behind what really happened, there are still many other theories that have credibility to them and have not yet been disproved.

Kennedy's term was supposed to come to an end in 1964. In an effort to raise his popularity and hopefully increase his chances at a re-election, Kennedy and his advisors decided it would be a good idea to take a "goodwill trip" throughout the South. In order to get closer to the public, he had his car's bullet-proof roof taken off. This gave his assassin a clear, unobstructed view of their target (Waggoner 11).

Some witnesses to the event thought they saw the tip of a rifle sticking out of a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository (President's Commission 17). Police rushed up to that room immediately after the assassination and found three empty rifle shells and a 6.5mm Italian-made rifle. The rifle was later on traced to TSBD employee Lee Harvey Oswald (Waggoner 18).

Under two hours after Kennedy's death, his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the America's new president, and then created the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy a week later. Because Earl Warren was appointed as the director of the Commission, it was given the nickname "The Warren Commission (Waggoner 24)."

About ten months after Kennedy's death, the Warren Commission released the 800 page long Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a.k.a. the Warren Report. After interviewing 489 people that may have been involved with the assassination, Warren and his fellow Warren Commission members came to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed President Kennedy, and acted alone (President's Commission 21). According to them, he was a "loner" and his "deep-rooted resentment of all authority which was expressed in a hostility toward every society in which he lived" drove him to committing the crime (President's Commission 23).

Oswald was born in New Orleans in 1939 (Waggoner 27). At the age of 15, he was turned onto the philosophy of Marxism (Waggoner 28). Marxism promoted a world without social classes. A world with no rich and no poor, where no one would own property, and everyone would be equal. This appealed to Oswald because he had lived in poverty his whole life, and no matter how hard his mother worked, they just couldn't seem to get out of it (Waggoner 29).

In 1962, he created an "unapproved chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) (Waggoner 32)," a pro-Castro organization. Some theorize that Kennedy's actions against Castro are what provoked Oswald to murder him.

America's relations with Cuba was very important because Cuba lies only 90 miles off the coast Florida's. Cuban leader Fidel Castro quickly established ties with the Soviet Union, which did not sit too well will Kennedy and the rest of America. In 1961, President Kennedy sent a group of CIA trained Cuban guerrillas to attempt to start a revolution against Castro. This was called the Bay of Pigs invasion. Unfortunately, it was a disaster and failed (Waggoner 13).

This wasn't the end of Kennedy's interactions with Cuba. A year later, Soviet nuclear weapons were found in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that all weapons be removed from the island and established air and naval blockades to keep more weapons from entering the island. A few days later, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev replied saying that he would comply to Kennedy's demand only if Kennedy agreed to lift the blockades and never invade Cuba again. This was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy agreed to this (Waggoner 14).

After Oswald's arrest, the evidence against him seemed to be pouring in. Most important was the fact that the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was traced to him.

However, this wasn't the only reason the Warren Commission believed that Oswald was indeed the killer. His actions immediately after the assassination only made him look more suspicious. He quickly left the TSBD after the assassination and was the only male employee that did not show up for work that afternoon. When he was arrested at 2:00pm that day, he had in his possession a loaded revolver and was already accused of killing Police officer Dave Tippitt between the time of his assassination and his arrest. This made him look like a terrified man attempting to run from the law (Waggoner 35).

One would think that an 800 page government document on the assassination would be the ultimate source for any research and would have answers to every question imaginable. However, that is not the case. Several of the statements in the Warren Report have been consider flawed by many people. For example, the Report claims that "a rifleman of Lee Harvey's Oswald's capabilities could have fired the shots from the rifle used in the assassination within the elapsed time (President's Commission 19)." However, nearly 50 men who served time in the marines with Oswald would disagree with that point. Nelson Delgado called his shooting ability "a joke", while Sherman Cooley said that "If I had to pick one man in the whole United States to shoot me, I'd pick Oswald...there's no way he could have ever learned to shoot well enough to do what they accused him of (qtd. in Waggoner 39)." What they accused Oswald of was firing off three shots with extreme precision in a matter of seconds.

Another claim made by the Warren Report that has been disputed is there conclusion that "Oswald was (not) involved with any person or group in a conspiracy to assassinate the President (President's Commission 21)." In disagreement with the Warren Report was the "U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations." According to them, "president John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of conspiracy (Findings and Recommendations 37)." They also said that "Since the Warren Commission's...investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy was seriously flawed, their failure to develop evidence of a conspiracy could not be given independent weight (Findings and Recommendations 97)".

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