Why oswald acted alone

Although society seems to need to feel that only great plots can take down great men, the two scientists argue that Oswald, alone, took his shot at history. Materials provided by University Of Rhode Island.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. ScienceDaily, 25 October University Of Rhode Island. Retrieved November 9, from www. How Good a Match Is It? But they cannot express the strength of the evidence numerically, Lee Harvey Oswald holds a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and newspapers in a backyard. This is one of the controversial photos used in the investigation of the assassination of John F.

Kennedy in Credit: Corbis via Getty Images. The legislation led to the most ambitious declassification effort in American history—more than five million documents in total. Over the next 25 years, the government fully released 88 percent of materials related to the assassination, and another 11 percent of partially redacted documents.

As of October , only one percent of documents remained classified. There have been no shocking revelations in these documents; nothing to challenge the conclusions of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Moreover, there have been no convincing alternative explanations of what took place in Dallas on November 22, At the same time, authors such as Gerald Posner Case Closed and Vincent Bugliosi Reclaiming History effectively refuted all the major conspiracy theories.

Technology has also conspired against conspiracy. Digital recreations of the Zapruder film prove conclusively that all three shots fired at the Kennedy motorcade came from the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building. There were no second shooters or conspiracies; just Oswald and a high-powered rifle.

Yet the declassified documents have highlighted one major flaw with the Warren Commission: its failure to present a convincing explanation for why Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK.

Much of the final commission report represented an indictment of Oswald. It failed to ascribe a single motive, but it made a strong case that Oswald was little more than a disaffected sociopath in desperate need of attention. It spent a great deal of effort showing how the events in his childhood—growing up without a father, making few friends, and dealing with an overbearing mother—molded him into an angry, embittered misfit.

Many of the new documents and information, while fragmentary and often contradictory, present a different portrait of an Oswald who was driven as much by ideology as he was by personal demons. These images were submitted as evidence in the Kennedy assassination case.

The men were suspected of being a possible conspirators after being seen visiting the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, the same time Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico. Exposing his motives could have outraged the public and forced President Johnson to take military action against Cuba. These recently declassified documents reveal that American intelligence agencies had kept close tabs on Oswald in the months before the shot JFK.

But none of this evidence was turned over to the Commission, and all of it was later destroyed. The Commission, for example, never saw a memo prepared by J. Edgar Hoover that reported that Oswald had threaten to kill JFK during his trip to Mexico City just three weeks before the assassination. The memo is one of at least 52 records never previously made public that were included in the release Thursday of about 2, unredacted government documents related to Kennedy's murder in Dallas two days earlier.

President Donald Trump approved withholding an undisclosed number of other documents pending a day national security review. Scholars and other experts have repeatedly said it's unlikely that there's anything groundbreaking in the documents. But as journalists and historians pored through the enormous database of material Thursday night and Friday morning, some interesting nuggets were turning up, among them Hoover's Nov. Hoover appeared to be particularly concerned that the public would have to be compelled to believe that Oswald was a lone actor — not part of a larger conspiracy.

In the Warren Report on Kennedy's assassination, Hoover was firm in stating that he hadn't seen "any scintilla of evidence" suggesting a conspiracy — a sentiment he expressed in other public forums, as well, but not in words as blunt as those he used the day Oswald was killed.

Referring to Nicholas Katzenbach, the deputy attorney general at the time, Hoover dictated: "The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.