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John F. Kennedy: A Presidency Filled With Conspiracy In the early afternoon of November 22, 1963, as President John F. Kennedy was riding in his motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, he was shot and killed. Within two hours, former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination. Ultimately, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but in the ensuing decades, conspiracy theories related to the John F. Kennedy assassination abounded. The goal of this paper is to evaluate three conspiracy theories related to the Kennedy Assassination. First, it will examine the claim that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the shooting. Next, it will consider
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For example, the claims of Madeline Brown have been widely discredited. There is no evidence that Johnson even attended the party where Brown claimed to have spoken to him. Also, although it is true that Johnson had motives to have Kennedy killed, since he benefitted politically from the assassination, powerful leaders in Texas had motives to make him look bad by suggesting that he was involved. Lyndon was a longtime Texas politician, having served in Congress since 1949, and he also had strong ties to the oil industry in the state. Therefore, he had many political enemies, and opponents of the conspiracy theory argue that they wanted to tarnish his reputation and reduce his political clout by spreading the story about his involvement in the Kennedy assassination …show more content…
Kennedy and John Connally. According to these theorists, it would have been hard to get three shots off in six seconds, because Oswald’s old rifle could only be fired once every 2.25 seconds, and nearly impossible to aim first at Kennedy and then at Connolly. Plus, they say that if both men had been hit by a single bullet, it would have had to cover a ridiculously twisting path between the two men (Kaplan). As an alternative, they suggest that Oswald’s shot hit Connally, but that Kennedy was shot from the front by a shooter from a nearby grassy knoll. They back this up with acoustic evidence and a claim from a medical doctor at the hospital who reported that Kennedy was hit in the throat (“Shots Came From More Than One