Post by Graveyardbride on Nov 22, 2014 12:17:17 GMT -5
Kennedy Assassination Theories Reverberate 51 Years Later
Saturday marks the 51st anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy, who brought youth and vigor to the White House when he became president in 1961. He and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy brought a unique sense of style and glamour that Washington had not seen before – or since. Kennedy was just 46 and around 1,000 days into his presidency when he was shot while riding in an open-top limousine in a motorcade in Dallas. Gov. John Connelly, riding in the front seat, also was wounded. The crime stunned the world and left even the president’s adversaries, such as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, grieving and speechless. Many Americans spent the weekend in tears, watching the president’s young widow and their two small children mourn publicly. The president’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot dead on live television on Monday, November 25.
Conspiracy theories persist. Oswald was a former U.S. Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, then returned to the United States in 1962. His motive likely will never be known.
Various conspiracy theories persist that someone beyond Oswald was responsible for the assassination. Among the possible culprits are the Mafia, CIA, Russia’s KGB, Cuba's Fidel Castro and then Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Many theories have been discredited. But in a story last year marking the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death, the Associated Press reported that “thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view” and could shed light on “nagging mysteries of the assassination.” A survey last year of Americans by the news organization CNN and market research firm ORC International showed JFK was the most popular president of the last half-century, with 90 percent approving of his handling of the role. No other U.S. president has come close to that rating.
Source: Voice of America, November 22, 2014.