Kennedy’s killing unresolved

To the editor:

Nov. 22  marks the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. Polls show that 60 percent of Americans don’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Since there are still significant unresolved issues about Kennedy’s murder, their suspicions are warranted. These issues are relevant to our past and present. Americans lived in a national security state in 1963 and still do.

First, the Warren Commission failed to adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy. Second, Allen Dulles, former CIA chief who Kennedy fired after the Bay of Pigs, never informed his fellow commissioners that the CIA had recruited the national crime syndicate, as well as anti-Castro Cubans, to assassinate Fidel Castro. Third, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald’s second shot passed through the bodies of the president and Texas Governor John Connally. Discovered in pristine condition on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital, the chain of custody for this “magic” bullet remains unclear. Fourth, Connally insisted that he was hit by a separate bullet. 

Fifth, doctors initially identified one of Kennedy’s wounds as an entrance wound but, under pressure, they changed it to an exit wound. In a 2013 joint interview, seven doctors who were at Parkland ER unanimously agreed that the wound by the president’s throat was an entry shot from the front. Sixth, there was a large hole in the back of Kennedy’s skull on the right side. The Zapruder film appears to show a bullet coming from the front right, hitting Kennedy’s head and driving him back to the left. 

Finally, in 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations stated they could not rule out the involvement of individual members of organized crime and anti-Castro groups in the assassination of the president. 

Howard Elterman