In spite of a year-long investigation into JFK’s assassination, and an 888-page report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the American public felt like something was off. In fact, subsequent investigation openly called the Warren Commission report into question.
2. What the world knows to be fact
On November 22nd, 1963, crowds lined the streets to see their beloved president and his wife, Jackie, as they traveled through downtown Dallas in an open-topped car. Gunshots rang out just after 12.30pm, hitting the president in the neck and head. He died soon after.
The Warren Commission report is 888 pages long, but there were actually some 5 million pages written as part of the investigation record. The record is kept in the US National Archives, and it’s not accessible to the public. That’s in spite of a law enacted back in 1992, which decreed that all assassination investigation records were to be accessible. Full disclosure was supposed to take place by October 2017, but that still hasn’t happened yet.
4. A lack of transparency
With the above being said, a portion of the investigation record has been available to the public since the 1990s, however, government agencies have been lobbying – successfully – to postpone full disclosure. Some information is still being withheld, and it will remain out of reach until the fall of 2021 at the very earliest. Even then, it will be up to the president to decide whether to make the information public.
Recently declassified documents have actually shown that there was a real conspiracy by CIA operatives to hide evidence from the Warren Commission. The story goes that the-then CIA director, John McCone, also worked with other CIA operatives to withhold evidence of another CIA conspiracy to assassinate the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.
6. Questions raised by the House of Representatives
The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that President Kennedy was likely assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee’s report hasn’t been successfully refuted in the time since. With that being said, experts doubt its credibility.
