Kennedy killing still a mystery.

• Author: Duffy, Jack
• Position: USA Yesterday - John F. Kennedy

FOR THE LAST 53 YEARS, many have pondered the question: "Who killed Pres. John F. Kennedy?" Today, according to most polls, that question remains a mystery. As Anthony Summers wrote in his 50th anniversary edition of Not In Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the JFK Assassination, the Kennedy assassination stays with us because of a perception by millions around the world that there is a mystery, that the full truth of what happened remains unknown. I agree. To accept the conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot and killed the President, one has to believe in coincidences beyond reality.

I have lived in Fort Worth, Texas, since 1960. I was in the second grade at Bruce Shulkey Elementary School on Nov. 22, 1963, when JFK was shot in Dallas. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. My parents had seen Pres. Kennedy that morning at the Hotel Texas and attended the breakfast where he gave his last speech. My interest in this assassination began in 1972 when my father saw a bootleg copy of the famous Adam Zapruder film at a friend's home. My father was a World War II veteran who served in the Navy as a gunnery officer. He later went to medical school and became a successful surgeon. He was convinced the fatal head shot had come from the grassy knoll after seeing the film. I saw the film the next day. I agreed with my father that the backward motion of the President's head was proof of a frontal shot. Therefore, there had to be a second assassin. From that day forward, I have been studying the murder.

I have bought and read almost every book published on this subject. These books are both pro- and anti-conspiracy. Most are well researched and written, while others are not. I purchased the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission as well as the House Select Committee on Assassinations volumes. The Warren Commission either ignored or chose to disregard the vast majority of witnesses whose testimony pointed to a conspiracy. I know because I have interviewed many of them myself.

In my opinion, the Warren Commission had an agenda from the moment of its creation--to avoid any credible evidence of a conspiracy and put the blame on the only suspect arrested: Oswald. I do not believe the Warren Commission or the House Committee gave serious consideration to the possibility that Oswald was who he said he was: "a patsy" framed by a well-organized conspiracy. I say this because I have met and talked with people who were on the House Committee. There is evidence that Oswald did not fire a shot at Kennedy. Most of that evidence was discovered by private researchers who refused to accept the lone gunman story.

It was convenient for the Warren Commission to blame a dead man for the "Crime of the Century." Research has proven the official story to be impossible. Eyewitnesses, the Parkland Hospital doctors; the Zapruder...