2023-10-09 03:19:12
Jakarta –
As new information comes to light that calls into question the theory of a lone gunman in the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, Clare Thorp explores how the event is being discussed in popular culture.
November 2023 will be the 60th anniversary since the President of the United States, John F Kennedy, was assassinated. Significant annual commemorations like this usually provide a space to remember and reflect on past events. But in the case of JFK’s death, interest in this matter has never waned.
Speculation regarding Kennedy’s death arose immediately after gunshots rang out on a sunny autumn day in Dallas. Since then, speculation regarding the mastermind behind the incident has never subsided.
Thousands of books, documentaries, podcasts, television shows and Hollywood films have been dedicated to the events of November 22, 1963.
However, the more information that emerges, the greater the doubts about what really happened.
No other event has given rise to as many conspiracy theories as the case of JFK’s death, ranging from mainstream theories about the involvement of the CIA or Cuba, to outlandish theories such as the UFO cover-up.
Now, there is a new surprise related to this story. Last week, after six decades of silence, a key witness came forward new information which adds suspicion to the official “report of JFK’s assassination.
In the testimony contained in his memoirs to be releasedformer secret service agent, Paul Landis, told Jackie Kennedy that day, saying that he took the bullet from Kennedy’s limousine after the president was shot and then left it on Kennedy’s stretcher at the hospital.
This is a small detail that differs from the official version of events, where bullets were found in the stretcher of Governor John B Conally Jr who was shot while riding in the presidential car. This strengthens the theory that the shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.
Interest in JFK’s death was sparked by a variety of factors.
“When you think of Kennedy, most people feel he was an iconic president, said Emeritus Head of American Studies at Nottingham University and JFK biographer Peter Ling.
“He was the first television president, and a young man with an attractive wife and lovely children.”
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In her forthcoming project, Ling has read a small portion of the nearly two million letters sent to Jackie Kennedy after her husband’s death.
The correspondence held at the John F Kennedy Library in Boston comes from around the world, and shows the extraordinary impact his death had at the time.
JFK’s death sparked grief in the United States and around the world (Getty Images)
This tragic incident was also recorded on 26 seconds of 8mm silent film. The video was recorded using an amateur film camera by a Dallas tailor, Abraham Zapruder. At that time, Zapruder stood on a concrete balcony to witness the arrival of President Kennedy.
Next to JFK, Jackie Kennedy is seen wearing a pink suit. Moments after Kennedy was shot, Jackie was seen crawling in the back of the car.
Zapruder has been called the first citizen journalist. The recording is also considered to have broken cinematic boundaries by some parties.
Eternal mystery
People’s interest in JFK’s assassination may be due to the enduring mystery surrounding it.
A year after JFK’s death, the Warren Commission, instructed to investigate the case by President Lyndon B Johnson, announced its findings.
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone to kill Kennedy. He fired three bullets from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depositary.
The second and third bullets hit Kennedy, and it was the third bullet that killed him.
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The report dismissed suggestions that what happened was part of “any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy
This investigative report also concluded that the actions of Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald two days after the incident, were an act of patriotism.
The murder was caught on camera and amateur video footage of this image was taken moments before the incident (Getty Images)
Not long after, doubts emerged and various questions regarding the results of the investigation continued to grow over the years.
“One of the problems with exposing the Kennedy assassination is that we never really hear Oswald’s side of the story, Ling said.
“There was someone who seemed to be the perpetrator, even though he denied it and maintained his innocence, but he was never tried.
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Amid divided public opinion, most Americans agree on one thing: there is a lot about JFK’s assassination that they don’t know.
A 2017 survey shows that 61% of Americans believe someone else was involved in the murder.
This mystery, plus the public’s continued interest in knowing more, has proven beneficial to writers, directors, and artists.
It is estimated that as many as 40,000 books have been published about Kennedy. These include a number of non-fiction books that raise various alternative theories such as the involvement of Russia, Castro, Cuban exiles, the CIA, the FBI, and organized crime.
In the book entitled Oswald Tale published in 1995, Norman Mailer delves into the shooter’s life.
Fiction writers also got inspiration from this event. The novel by Stephen King entitled 11/22/63 tells the story of a time traveler who tries to prevent the assassination of JFK.
American Tabloid by James Ellroy tells the fictional story of JFK’s death from the perspective of three rogue lawmen.
Novel Libra Don DeLillo’s work published in 1988 placed Oswald at the center of a CIA conspiracy. DeLillo spent three years on research.
“I don’t know anything other than what happened at Dealey Plaza that day. I deliberately chose the most obvious possibility, that the assassination was staged by anti-Castros, as the simplest way to be faithful to what we know from its history. Will we know the truth? I don’t know. But if someday evidence of a conspiracy actually emerges, I think it will be much more interesting and fantastic than the novel,” DeLillo told The New York Times.
On the big screen, JFK’s assassination was told in various forms, starting from being briefly touched on in Full Metal Jacket the work of Stanley Kubrick, to the point that inspired the entire plot of the story.
In In the Line of Fire, released in 1993, Clint Eastwood played fictional Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, who was guarding Kennedy in Dallas on the day of the incident.
Guilt-ridden over his failure to save Kennedy, Horrigan becomes obsessed with preventing another assassination.
In the movie Jackie which was released in 2016, Natalie Portman plays the first lady in the days after her husband’s death.
But by far the most important film related to the assassination is Oliver Stone’s controversial JFK.
This drama film, which was released in 1991, received eight Oscar nominations, including in the best film category. But some critics called the film “dangerous because it mixes documentary footage with fictional drama.
In the narrative in Stone’s film, the CIA wanted Kennedy dead because he planned to defuse the conflict in Vietnam.
The theory was bandied about for years, and did not die down due to the CIA and FBI’s reluctance to speak out.
“There’s a kind of psychological dynamic where we tend to change our memories in order to understand what happened, Ling said.
“So the Kennedy assassination came to be seen as the moment when the hopes of the 60s began to falter. When Oliver Stone’s work was released and said [Kennedy] killed by the CIA so that experiments in Vietnam could continue, that’s what many Americans want to believe, that everything was taken from them by evil forces.
In 1992, the US Congress passed the John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, partly because of Stone’s film. The law resulted in millions of classified documents regarding the murder being released.
This information was released in stages, and President Joe Biden has authorized the final release this year. Every new piece of information adds to the frenzy.
Shocking new testimony from Paul Landis, contained in his book, The Final Witnesswhich will be released on October 10, is sure to shake things up even more.
“It’s very important to break down existing findings, Ling said.
Because bullets were found in Connally’s stretcher, the Warren Commission initially concluded that one bullet passed through Kennedy and hit Connally, causing him to be injured. This bullet became known as the “magic bullet”, although many doubted that one bullet could have such an effect.
“If that’s not what happened, there are unanswered questions about where the bullet hit Connally, Ling said.
“If we find more bullets than we can match the rate of fire that Lee Harvey Oswald was capable of, then someone else was shooting.
But Ling doubts the credibility of this new information. The question arises as to why Landis waited so long to reveal it. He argued that he avoided anything related to the murder for years, and this certainly made his book highly anticipated.
In his article in Vanity Fairhistorian James Robenalt said he believed Landis.
He called the findings “the most significant information about the murder since 1963.
It’s too early to conclude where this new information will lead, but one thing is certain: it won’t stop people from continuing to theorize about what happened that day.
“This is a detective story that everyone knows, Ling said.
“But no one knows how it will end.
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The English version of the article is entitled The assassination of JFK: One of the US’s biggest mysteries you can read at BBC Culture.
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