The Death of John F. Kennedy: How Many Shots?

Some witnesses said they herd more than four shots, and UPI reporter Merridian Smith said in a dispatch 25 minutes after the shooting that ‘some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president’s car, probably from a grassy knoll to which police rushed.” This would mean they heard many more than four shots. This testimony has led one investigator to suggest that the shot came from the trunk. This is unlikely, and it cannot be checked out in any event. Three days later, the Lincoln was completely stripped and rearmored by Hess and Eisenhardt.

Some insist that the assassination of Kennedy marked the accession of a secret cabal that has run our government ever since. If this were true, it would seem that if such a cabal were in control, that Richard Nixon would not have had to rely upon his own plumbers unit to carry out black bag jobs. Nixon’s goals and priorities were, after all, very much in line with what writers have assumed were those of the alleged secret government. Nixon’s plumbers unit was financed through mechanisms created by George H.W. Bush, who Nixon would appoint head of the Republican National Committee.

The names of the people who shot Kennedy and the details on C.I.A. involvement will never be known . The story is an endless rabbit hole strewn with all sorts of red herrings. St. John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt has said that it is even possible that there were as many as three simultaneous plots to Kill Kennedy. It is generally assumed that the hit team had at least four members. There is a December 6, 1978 memorandum from the sheriff of Sarasota County, Florida to the F.B.I. in Tampa advising them that Stempeh Ruth told a deputy in 1960 or 1970 that he went to Cuba in 1969 to kill one of the four or five men on the Kennedy hit team. Ruth wass supposed to be a C.I.A. asset, but he got a 60 prison term in 1988 for moving drugs.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy was a huge historical event, and there still is not enough evidence to piece together what actually happened. There is more than enough evidence to suspect that the official story was essentially a fabrication, but it still proves very difficult to sort out all the contradictions and identify and deal with deliberate disinformation. This is probably true with the respect of many other contemporary events. For example, no one can prove for certain why the US invaded Iraq. Historians, due to a methodology inherited from Leopold von Ranke, may find themselves with no choices but to repeat the official or default stories about the assassination and Iraq, perhaps adding that some have questioned these accounts. Its an endless rat hole.

The people who planned Kennedy’s murder could have accomplished this
without so much fanfare. It could have been done in a way to arouse almost no suspicion. Rather it was accomplished in the Dealey Plaza shooting gallery, with all sorts of messy details, and an explanatory theory that would only be accepted by the weak-minded. It was a way of announcing to the citizens of a one-time democracy that other forces were now in control and that ordinary citizens might as well swallow hard and accept it.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy is surrounded with so much contradictory evidence and deliberate misinformation that the true picture of what occurred on November 22 will probably never emerge. Given this situation, many still find that the “lone nut” or default position should be accepted. Yet, It is clear that more than 3 shots were fired, that the autopsy evidence was inaccurate and partly changed or removed, and that a great deal of effort has been exerted to muddy the picture and generate piles of misleading disinformation. Oswald was clearly tied to the intelligence community as was George De Mohrenschildt . The latter must have had a good idea of what happened, but it is not at all certain that he ever told the truth.Democracies depend upon transparency and the free flow of information . We can conclude that the transformation of the US into a banana republic began that day.