52 Years Later, the Cover-up Is Still Failing

[Jim Hargrove]

From McClatchy D.C. news service [11/22/2015]

The Kennedy assassination was a watershed moment in American life. JFK was the first president to be killed in the era of film and television. With numerous photos of the 35th president taken in his last moments alive, including the infamous "Zapruder film" showing Kennedy in the moments before, during and after he was struck, Americans have long speculated not only about why the shooting occurred, but also how it happened.

In 2013, on the 50-year anniversary of the assassination, a clear majority of Americans (61 percent in a Gallup poll) still believed others besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved. But this percentage was the lowest found in nearly 50 years.

Could one man have fired three shots and killed Kennedy in a way consistent with his wounds? If Oswald actually acted alone at the Texas School Book Depository, was he funded or supported by others? These are some of the questions that have burned in the American psyche since that fateful day in 1963.

It is possible that new evidence in the Kennedy assassination will never materialize. The JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, enacted in 1992, declassified 98 percent of the unreleased documents in the Warren Commission's investigation, with other unreleased assassination documents scheduled for release in 2017. Thus far, public documents not originally released in or part of the Warren Commission's report from 1964 have not demonstrated that there was any kind of conspiracy, yet clearly most Americans disagree with the official findings.

Speculating about who was really responsible for Kennedy's death will likely remain a topic of fascination for the American public for many years to come.