Monday, October 09, 2006

How to kill a president

November 22, 1963 - The motorcade snaked its way through downtown Dallas and, unbeknownst to all, into the 26 most controversial seconds on film. As admirers crowded to catch a glimpse of America's most iconic First couple, shots rang through Dealey Plaza and within 30 minutes, President John F. Kennedy was declared dead. Police arrested 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald and tagged him as the lone gunman with a telescope rifle at the Texas Book Depository overlooking the scene of the crime. The police had their man, but America would never witness its legal circus. Two days later, on national TV, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fired a fatal bullet into the suspect. Ruby himself died of cancer 4 years later. No trials took place.
While Oswald is said to be the shooter, footage argue otherwise. The fatal shots rang out when the motorcade was close to the grassy knoll where a shooter could have hidden. Roughly 75 photographers filmed the assassination but of the film collected, none captured the shady grassy knoll. Curiously enough, photographs show a scarf-clad woman filming the motorcade from a vantage point that could have captured the grassy knoll. Unfortunately, the world would never view those crucial moments because she was never identified or tracked down. Now she is known as the babushka lady and a lingering question remains: could she have captured an incriminating visual of the 'real' assassin, the face lurking behind the grassy knoll?
If it was Oswald, did he act alone? JFK had powerful enemies, in particular, Fidel Castro. The US's CIA admits to have engaged in covert operations to murderer El Presidente. The Cuban missile crises and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion also draw the wrath of the Cubans. Coincidentally Oswald idolized Castro and was recently denied entry into Cuba, while Ruby spent some time in the island before. Could they have been Cuban instruments?

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