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1 -1- The Day the Music Died November 22, 1963 Mick Chantler, OLLI Instructor A major factor in the public s ongoing fascination with all things Kennedy is our abiding obsession with the assassinations. The haunting memory of their tragic deaths keeps the youthful images of Jack and Bobby as fresh and tantalizing as ever. Alongside the reverential hagiographies, the presidential histories, and the lavish coffee table photographic studies of the Kennedys stand a huge number of inquiries that claim to find the solution to the mysteries of who killed the brothers, and why they were both cut down in the prime of life. In Jack s case, the mystery was in fact solved long ago. The fact that such debates continue to sell demonstrates the extraordinary hold of these two dashing young men on our collective imagination. The conspiracy theories also tell us much about our contemporary mistrust of government and suspicion of all forms of authority. The never ending arguments over the events in Dallas feed our longing for a rational explanation of what appeared to be a random act. For most of us, plots are more palatable than Chaos. However, despite the confusion generated by the hurried and flawed inquiries of congressional committees, mishandled evidence, and dreadful mistakes made during the investigation, the most likely explanation for the killing is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting on his own, murdered President Kennedy. A veritable cottage industry of Kennedy assassination-ology has produced a prodigious number of books, movies, and articles which claim any number of nefarious forces were in play that dark day. But recently the wheel of inquiry seems to have turned, and the most thoughtful students of November 22, 1963 now seem to confirm the original conclusion that Oswald alone was responsible. To be sure, a sound case can be made that many groups wanted Kennedy dead, but motive does not necessarily imply deed.

2 -2- Oswald s troubled past clearly establishes that it was quite in character for him to carry out such evil. Born in 1939, he was identified early in life as psychologically damaged; a megalomaniac with the potential for violent and aggressive behavior. He was physically abusive with his mother. The Oswald family moved frequently during his childhood, and the boy went to many different schools. For several months he was consigned to a home for juvenile delinquent boys, and was put under psychiatric care. At fifteen he began to espouse Marxist doctrine, and stated he wanted to join a communist cell. Despite such radical leanings, the Marines accepted Oswald at the young age of seventeen. The Corps trained him in marksmanship, and he eventually qualified as a sharpshooter. Oswald developed a strongly narcissistic streak, constantly believing that he was more intelligent than most people, and that authority figures were frustrating his deserved rise to prominence in the world. At the age of twenty, he took up the study of Russian, and decided to defect to the Soviet Union. He evidently believed that the Communist regime there would welcome him for his socialist beliefs and grant him the respect he merited. A fellow Marine other Leathernecks called him Oswaldskovich for his pro-russian tendencies observed later that Lee wanted to be honored by future generations. He was deeply concerned with his image in history, and he expected the Russians to give him a place of honor. But things didn t go according to Oswald s plans. He had hoped to attend Moscow University despite the fact that he was a high school dropout. Instead the Soviets assigned him to a boring electronics factory job in Minsk. Disappointed with the less than enthusiastic welcome he had received in Russia, he decided to return home in May Burdened now with a wife (Marina) and child, Lee was again let down when there were no photographers or reporters to meet him upon his return to the United States. He believed that as a returning defector he was more important, and more worthy of serious interest, than the American press corps seemed to think. Crushed by the lack of attention, he took out his frustrations on his hapless Russian wife. The couple argued frequently,

3 -3- and he beat her frequently. Unable to keep a job, he continued his classic drifter pattern by moving from place to place. Oswald realized that life was no better back in America than it had been in the dreary Soviet factory. Early in 1963 he gravitated toward violent solutions to his problems. Assassination of a prominent figure would guarantee him a place in history, and he turned his attention toward the colorful right-wing Major General Edwin A. Walker. (Walker had been the reactionary leader of the rebel anti-u.s. Government forces during the Battle of ol Miss the previous autumn; he thus qualified as a bona fide fascist in Oswald s world view.) Oswald photographed an alley near Walker s home which would serve as his sniper s nest, and purchased a rifle with a telescopic sight by mail order. The weapon arrived on March 25, and on April 10 th Oswald acted. He fired one shot through a living room window at the retired General, but missed his target. Shaken, Oswald returned home to plan his next move. For a time he considered killing Richard Nixon, but the opportunity never materialized. Stymied again, the unemployed would-be assassin traveled to New Orleans where he had lived for a time as a boy. Marina and their daughter stayed in Dallas. While in the Crescent City, Oswald became infatuated with the Cuban Revolution and its charismatic leader Fidel Castro. He joined the local branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and handed out pro-castro leaflets on street corners. On September 25, Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico City in hopes of obtaining a visa there which would enable him to travel to the socialist paradise in Cuba. But as always, Oswald found that reality didn t conform to his wishes, and the Cuban consulate turned down his request. A dejected Oswald returned to Dallas on October 3. By this time, Marina had given birth to a second child, and the Oswalds were living separately, at least until Lee could find a steady job and an apartment. A friend of Marina heard that the Texas School Book Depository near Dealey Plaza was hiring, and on October 16 Oswald was hired to work there. Less than a month later Dallas newspapers announced that the visiting President s motorcade

4 -4- would pass right past the Depository. The nihilistic Oswald aggravated by a failing marriage, chained to menial jobs, spurned by both the Cuban and Soviet regimes he idolized felt his moment upon the stage of world history had come at last. He had always bragged that he would one day do something which would win him everlasting fame and glory, and he saw Kennedy s visit as his chance to fulfill that dream. On the morning of the assassination, he brought his $20 rifle to work in a brown paper wrapper. At lunchtime he used book cartons to construct a makeshift sniper s nest on the sixth floor, where windows overlooked the street below. At 12:30 pm, as the Kennedy motorcade passed the Book Depository, Oswald entered history as the American Brutus. Over a span of eight seconds (not five, as previously thought) Oswald fired three shots at the open car carrying the President, Jackie, Governor John Connally and Mrs. Connally. The third shot was fatal, and John would be officially pronounced dead at 1:00 pm. Curiously, Oswald got what he wanted from his mad act. The silly little communist (as Jackie called him) became one of the best known figures in American history. When Jack Ruby murdered him in the Dallas jail on live nationwide television, he gained a certain dramatic cachet that we would not have earned had he been turned over to the prison system. Had Oswald spent the rest of his life behind bars, he would have been diminished in the public imagination. But his quasi-shakespearean demise won him the notoriety that he always wanted. Silent in his grave, conspiracy investigators could constantly study and reinvent Oswald to suit their particular theories. Perversely, his signature now is worth more to assassination buffs than Kennedy s! Norman Mailer and many others who spent years examining the Zapruder film, conducting sophisticated ballistics experiments, and recreating the killing using complex computer technology now tend to believe that Oswald alone shot Kennedy. There was no Grassy Knoll shooter, no triangulation, no tramp assassin. Mailer came to the conclusion that an expert marksman in an adrenaline induced state of high agitation could indeed pull off the remarkable

5 -5- shooting which killed the President. Computerized enhancements of the film clearly show that the shots took place over a period of eight seconds, which was ample for Oswald to take aim and fire three shots. The trajectories of the bullets establish indisputably that they were fired from Oswald s window. No shots came from anywhere else. The killer s first shot missed its mark; the second hit both Kennedy and the Texas Governor the much maligned magic bullet wounding both men. The third, and fatal shot, struck the right side of Kennedy s head. Despite all the controversy and counter claims, it now is generally accepted that the bullets were fired from the rifle that Oswald ordered by mail back in early spring. Oswald s fingerprints were at the crime scene, and three empty cartridge cases were found on the floor of his perch/window. After firing the three shots, Oswald left the building and was able to make his way through the panic and chaos to his apartment. There he grabbed the pistol he would use in a few minutes to shoot Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit. The assassin tried to hide in the Texas Theatre, but he was captured after a brief struggle with Dallas policemen. When he was subdued, he told the arresting officer, I guess everyone will know who I am now. Just a week after the shooting, President Johnson appointed Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren to head the distinguished panel to investigate the assassination. In a hurried and admittedly slipshod fashion, the Commission quickly concluded that Oswald had acted alone there was no conspiracy involving the Russians, Cubans, mobsters, CIA, or anyone else. Immediately, most Americans questioned the Commission s tainted findings. The Commission had been pressured to Rush to Judgment by a rattled Washington political establishment that wanted to calm the waters of controversy and sooth a frightened public s imagination. In its haste, the Warren Commission did not thoroughly weigh conflicting testimony, or conduct adequate evaluations of ambiguous photos. Additionally, both of the top law enforcement agencies in the land, the CIA and the FBI, withheld crucial information. Both organizations wanted to conceal their mistakes and shady activities which might have been

6 -6- related to the assassination. Robert Kennedy, Commission member Allen Dulles (former CIA Chief) and FBI Director Hoover all remained silent during the superficial investigations. Little wonder there was so much public cynicism regarding the Final Report, issued in September of The general reaction was that the government was deliberately misleading the public, and likely hiding a dark truth which they didn t want us to know. Later, when four of the seven commissioners themselves expressed doubts about their conclusion, public skepticism heightened. Widespread mistrust of the Warren Commission s findings, combined with suspicion over the official version of the assassination of Martin Luther King resulted in a reopening of the cases. In 1976 the House Committee on Assassinations vowed to get to the bottom of these tragedies, and a group of dedicated congressmen worked for three years to try to untangle the knots. This investigative body initially concluded that President Kennedy had been hit only twice and that both shots came from Oswald s rifle. But shortly before the committee was ready to release its report, more questions were introduced about the possibility of a fourth shot being heard on the tape of a Dallas policeman s radio. Since all agreed that Oswald had only fired three times, a fourth shot would imply a second shooter, and hence a conspiracy. Eventually the controversial acoustical evidence was disproved, and the fourth shot theory was abandoned. But the second shooter debate had further stirred the pot. No one was ever able to firmly identify the existence of a second gunman. No matter, though speculation on the active role of mobsters, rogue CIA agents, anti-castro Cubans, or other even more unlikely conspirators continued to swirl in the troubled American psyche. One theory even held that government agents shot the President because he had threatened to reveal secret contacts with extraterrestrials! Over the years, conspiracy buffs erected their increasingly fantastic theories on dubious evidence and selected testimonials from some highly questionable witnesses. Many of their sources who were present at Dealey Plaza on November

7 -7-22, 1963 changed their stories over time, often contradicting themselves in the process. One star witness, Jean Hill, became an ardent devotee of the Grassy Knoll and second shooter thesis, even though she didn t mention the Grassy Knoll assassin when she was interviewed the day of the killing. It was only later that she recalled seeing gunmen on the Grassy Knoll. (She did, however, clearly recall seeing JFK pet a little dog that was riding in the back seat between him and Jackie, only moments before gunfire erupted. However, there was no dog in the President s car. Hill had imagined the pathetic and touching scene after the fact, and introduced it into her testimony.) Other witnesses swore that they saw muzzle flashes and puffs of smoke on the Grassy Knoll even though modern rifles don t give rise to light or smoke. Conspiracy buffs build elaborate hypotheses that would require cooperation and silence from hundreds of conspirators. Their protagonists were able to accomplish amazing feats, such as swapping corpses, surgically altering Kennedy s wounds to show that bullets struck him from the front, replacing the real Oswald with an imposter, and injecting Jack Ruby with a deadly cancer to silence him. Some go so far as to suggest that Oswald was a Manchurian Candidate assassin, programed by nefarious CIA spies, or Right Wing fanatics. They contend that people who knew the truth were murdered to ensure their secrets were consigned to oblivion. But while all this speculation makes for great entertainment, no one has established a truly credible alternative scenario to the most logical conclusion that Oswald was a troubled Nowhere Man who wanted to crawl into history by hook or by crook, and at last found a way to do so. Why, then, is the faith in a conspiracy so widespread and persistent? Perhaps we need to make such a shocking event more meaningful. It simply is unacceptable to the rational mind that such a promising and charismatic leader could be randomly cut down by such a shabby sociopath as Lee Harvey Oswald. We recoil at the terrible implications of living in such a chaotic world, and seek shelter in some hidden order, some plan however sinister. We would rather believe that Kennedy was the target of a coordinated plot for significant, hidden purposes

8 -8- than accept that his death amounted to nothing more than a desultory fluke. For many, an evil design is preferable to the haphazard workings of chance. There are damaging consequences for the body politic of such deep, abiding mistrust in the official explanation of the crime. We have become a cynical people and a credulous citizenry. We are prepared to believe any kind of nonsense it seems as if Americans will casually accept almost any outlandish charge without demanding strict criteria for hard evidence. A rational sense of what constitutes Truth may have been the most significant victim in Dealey Plaza that awful day.