If you have visited this website before, you may have noticed that one of my favourite people to write about is president John F. Kennedy and one of my favourite topics to write about is his assassination.
You may be reading this thinking I have already wrote about this topic and you would be correct. However, I first wrote about this when I first started taking an interest in the subject. I got some stuff wrong and left some stuff out. This will be a totally new, revamped version. Spreading over multiple parts. This will be the first part in this new series. The other reason for writing this new and improved report, is this year marks 60 years since the assassination took place. This will also be the first part in a wider series i have named “The Kennedy Trilogy”. After this this series is done, I will also be telling the story of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the car incident and cover up that Ted Kennedy was involved in on Chappaquiddick Island.
Since I last wrote about this subject I have learned a lot. In the past few years, thanks to former president Donald Trump and current president at the time of writing this, Joe Biden, thousands of files relating to the JFK assassination have been released. Giving us more information of what happened that day. But the day itself and the events leading up to it is still shrouded in mystery. In this new and improved report of the assassination we will cover what happened, who was involved, who was potentially involved, the Warren Commission, The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations report as well as information and theories discussed by independent researchers and so much more. At the end of this, I will talk about my own thoughts of what happened that day. With all that out of the way, let’s begin. I hope you enjoy.
Before we get into the events of November 22nd 1963, we’re going to go back and take a look at the man who allegedly shot Kennedy. Now, we could start at the very beginning to when Lee Harvey Oswald was born and talk about his childhood, but i don’t think his childhood is important nor contributes to what he may have done. Instead we’re going to jump to the point where Oswald joins the US military. Oswald was able to join at the younger age of 17 due to his older brother, who was also in the military, signing off as his legal guardian.
Oswald didn’t have the best service record. Although he only served in the marines for 3 years, It was at this time he started expressing his pro-Soviet beliefs to his colleagues and started to learn the Russian language. This earned him the nickname “Oswaldskovich”. He would also earn the nickname “Ozzie Rabbit” after an incident in the Philippines where he shot his rifle into the jungle while on guard duty. Although that incident didn’t result in any major consequences he still managed to get himself court-martialed twice. The first time being because he accidentally shot himself with a hand gun that he wasn’t suppose to have and the second time after he got into a fight with a sergeant he believed got him into trouble for the first incident. This resulted in Oswald being demoted, imprisoned and after his imprisonment, he was surprisingly honorably released from active duty in the Marine Corps and put into the Marine Corps Reserve. Sometime after this in 1959 he was granted discharge to look after his mother, only Oswald lied and had no intention of looking after her, chances are she wasn’t even unwell. Oswald’s real intention was to defect to the Soviet Union and after leaving the military, he flew to Moscow to attempt to do just that.
Oswald traveled to Russia on a one week visitors visa. He then applied for citizenship but the application was denied. Shortly after this Oswald slit his wrists in a bathtub and was put into hospital for a week and spent time on a psych ward under evaluation. After leaving the hospital, Oswald went to the US Embassy in Moscow and tried to renounce his citizenship. He even threatened to leak military secrets to the Soviets. Although, being only a private, it’s doubtful he would have known anything of value. Oswald was allowed to stay in the Soviet Union and was sent to Minsk where he worked as a lathe operator at the Gorizont Electronics Company. During his time in this job he fell in-love with a woman who also worked at the facility. He later proposed to this woman but she declined. Later saying that she only dated Oswald out of pity, thinking he was just a bit lonely. With a broken heart, Oswald went back to the US Embassy and asked for his passport back. The Soviet Union was not what he expected. However, you can’t just get a passport back, there are forms to be filled out and other stuff that goes into the works. Oswald, while still in the Soviet Union met another woman, by the name of Marina. They later got married and had a child together. In 1962, The Oswald’s move back to the United States and settle down in Texas.
Oswald’s return to the US did not make headlines, which is surprising. Back in 1959 when he defected, It made headlines. So now that the defector had come back to the US, you’d think the press would pick that up. Some believe that Oswald should have been arrested for treason the second he stepped off the plane.
Life back in America wasn’t great for Oswald, he struggled to hold down a job and was fired in April of 1963. Before he was fired he purchased a rifle for $19.95. an Italian Carcano Fucile di Fanteria Mod. 91/38. It was with this rifle that Oswald is believed to have killed Kennedy with.
Since there was no trial and no confession, we can’t say with 100% certainty, that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. But there are things we can look at the strongly suggest that he did. We know that he possibly killed a police officer on the same day as the assassination. Officer J.D. Tippit. But we’ll cover all that in the next part of this series. Right now, we’re going to talk about the man Oswald first tried to kill. I say tried, because this is an assassination attempt that ends in failure.
The target was a former Major General by the name of Edwin Walker. Walker had resigned his commission after comments he made about former President Harry Truman and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. He was also a supporter of segregation and even organised protests in secret. Kennedy accepted his resignation and Walker returned to his home in Dallas, Texas.
Oswald took a shot at Walker from outside Walker’s home. He took the shot from less than 100 feet way as Walker sat at his desk. The bullet missed and only wounded Walker in the arm. Police that investigated the incident didn’t come up with any suspects and it wasn’t until the Warren Commission report that it was revealed that Oswald was behind the Walker assassination attempt.
After the Walker incident, Oswald moved down to New Orleans and started a pro-Castro activist group. There’s speculation that it was during his time in New Orleans that he met a retired FBI agent who was at this time working as a private investigator called Guy Bannister. The speculation goes into that through Bannister, Oswald met people like David Ferrie and Clay Shaw (A.K.A. Clay Bertrand). This was the group of men New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison accused of being involved with the Kennedy assassination. An accusation that would later bring Clay Shaw to trial. We’re getting ahead of ourselves though, We’ll cover Jim Garrison and the trial of Clay Shaw in another part of this series.
While handing out leaflets, promoting his pro-Castro views, Oswald got into some altercations with anti-Castro activists. After spending some time in jail, Oswald was later released. His wife, Marina had returned to their home in Irving, Texas and Oswald said he would join her some time after. Instead, Oswald went down to Mexico City where he applied for a visa to visit Cuba and the Soviet Union. After 3 weeks, his visa was approved but by this time Oswald had got inpatient waiting and returned to Texas. The Dallas CIA branch was made aware of his attempts to contact the Cubans and the Soviets.
It was during this time that a neighbor of Oswald’s informed him about a job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Since Oswald didn’t have much luck finding a job, let alone holding one down, he wasn’t in a position to be picky. He accepted the job but since neither he or Marina drove, he decided to rent a room in Dallas and travel back to Irving on the weekends.
The FBI was most likely not aware of the room he rented in Dallas. They tried to speak to him a few times but only ever went to his home in Irving when he wasn’t home. When Marina informed him about the visits from the FBI, Oswald went to the FBI office and demanded to speak to the agent that had been visiting his home. The agent was James Hosty. Hosty had been investigating Oswald since his time in New Orleans.
When the secretary informed Oswald that he was unavailable, he decided to leave a note. What the note said is up for speculation. Two different versions of the note was told by Hosty and his secretary. One saying that the note said that if he didn’t stop going to the Oswald home, he would blow the FBI building up and burn down the police department. The other saying it was a note saying that if Hosty didn’t stop bothering his wife, he would take further action. It’s possible “further action” refers to the first statement. Anyway, the note was later destroyed by Hosty after Oswald’s name was linked to the Kennedy assassination. So I will leave the contents of the note to your imagination.
Which brings us to the day before the assassination. Oswald asked one of his colleagues who was also his ride to work, to drive to Irving so he could pick up some curtain rods. Oswald was driven home and what he came out iwith was a long paper bag. Most likely, Oswald did not have curtain rods in this bag. Instead, it was most likely his rifle wrapped up in that bag. The next day President Kennedy drives through Dallas and the rest is history.
But what became of Lee Harvey Oswald. Well, we’ll go over what he went through in the immediate aftermath of the assassination in the next part. But 2 days after the assassination, Oswald was being led through the basement of the Dallas Police Department. A local nightclub owner, Jack Ruby stepped out of the crowd and shot Oswald in the abdomen. Oswald died and went to his grave denying ever shooting Kennedy. Saying that he was just a patsy and that a photo of him holding his rifle in the garden had been faked.
I hope you have enjoyed this and will be back (back and to the left) for the next part. In the next part we’ll look at Kennedy’s arrival in Dallas, the route that he took and all the events that unfolded on November 22nd 1963.
Profiles in History 