Assassination of John F. Kennedy Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Warren Commission=== {{Main|Warren Commission}} [[File:Lbj-wc.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|alt=Members of the Warren Commission present their report to President Johnson|The [[Warren Commission]] presents its report to President Johnson. From left to right: [[John J. McCloy|John McCloy]], [[J. Lee Rankin]] (General Counsel), Senator [[Richard Russell, Jr.|Richard Russell]], Congressman [[Gerald Ford]], Chief Justice [[Earl Warren]], President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], [[Allen Dulles]], Senator [[John Sherman Cooper]], and Congressman [[Hale Boggs]].]] On November 29, President Johnson established by executive order "[[Warren Commission|The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy]]" and selected Chief Justice [[Earl Warren]] of the [[U.S. Supreme Court]] to chair the investigation, commonly known as the Warren Commission.<ref>[[#Baluch|Baluch (1963)]]</ref><ref name="kurtz2"/> Its 888-page final report was presented to Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public three days later.<ref>[[#Roberts|Roberts (1964)]]</ref> It concluded that [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] had acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding Connally, and that [[Jack Ruby]] acted alone in killing Oswald.<ref>[[#Lewis|Lewis (1964)]], p. 1.</ref><ref>[[#Pomfret|Pomfret (1964)]], p. 17.</ref> It made no conclusions as to Oswald's motive, but noted his [[Marxism]], [[anti-authoritarianism]], violent tendencies, failure to form personal relationships, and his desire to be significant in history.<ref>[[#Bugliosi2007|Bugliosi (2007)]], p. 359.</ref> Upon examining the Zapruder film, commission staffers realized that the FBI's gunshot theory was impossible. The reaction times of Kennedy and Connally were too close to have been caused by two bullets from Oswald: the reaction interval was less than the 2.3 seconds that it took to reload.<ref>[[#Bugliosi2007|Bugliosi (2007)]], pp. 454–457.</ref><ref>[[#Sabato|Sabato (2013)]], p. 136.</ref> This was one of the commission's most crucial findings: that a single shot caused the non-fatal wounds of Kennedy and Connally, known as the "single-bullet theory".<ref>[[#Bugliosi2007|Bugliosi (2007)]], p. xx.</ref><ref>[[#Specter|Specter (2015)]]</ref> In May 1964, staffer [[Arlen Specter]] replicated the single bullet's trajectory via a reenactment in Dealey Plaza: the bullet's path was exactly consistent with Kennedy's and Connally's wounds.<ref>[[#Bugliosi2007|Bugliosi (2007)]], pp. 355, 455.</ref> Out of the eight commission members, three—Representative [[Hale Boggs]] and Senators [[John Sherman Cooper|John Cooper]] and [[Richard Russell Jr.|Richard Russell]]—found the theory "improbable"; their qualms were not mentioned in the final report.<ref>[[#Bugliosi2007|Bugliosi (2007)]], pp. 455–456.</ref> Conspiracy theorists labelled this theory the "magic bullet theory", partly due to the bullet's intact and purportedly pristine state. However, the HSCA's [[Michael Baden]] noted that the bullet, despite its lack of fragmentation, was fundamentally deformed.<ref name="posnerbullet"/> In 2023, Secret Service Agent Paul Landis—who had stood on the running board of Kennedy's car—told ''The New York Times'' that he retrieved the "magic bullet" from immediately behind Kennedy's seat upon arrival at Parkland, and that he placed it on Kennedy's stretcher. Landis believes that the bullet dislodged from a shallow wound in Kennedy's back.<ref>[[#Baker|Baker (2023)]]</ref> As well as the Warren Report's 27 published volumes, the commission created hundreds of thousands of pages of investigative reports and documents. [[Relman Morin]] stated that "Never in history was a crime probed as intensely"; Bugliosi concluded that the commission's basic findings have "held up remarkably well".<ref>[[#Bugliosi2007|Bugliosi (2007)]], pp. xxxii–xxxiii.</ref> According to [[Gerald Posner]], the Warren report is "universally derided" by the American public.<ref>[[#Posner|Posner (1993)]], p. x.</ref> Walter Cronkite noted that, "Although the Warren Commission had full power to conduct its own independent investigation, it permitted the FBI and the CIA to investigate themselves – and so cast a permanent shadow on the answers."<ref>[[#CBS|'The Warren Report – Part 4 – Why Doesn't America Believe the Warren Report?". CBS.]]</ref> According to a 2014 report by CIA Chief Historian [[David Robarge]], then-CIA director [[John A. McCone]] was involved in a "benign cover-up" by withholding information from the commission.<ref>[[#Shenon|Shenon (2014)]]</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page