John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on 29th May, 1917. His great grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, had emigrated from Ireland in 1849 and his grandfathers, Patrick Joseph Kennedy and John Francis Fitzgerald, were important political figures in Boston. Kennedy's father was a highly successful businessman who later served as ambassador to Great Britain (1937-40).
In 1940 Kennedy graduated from Harvard University with a science degree. The same year saw the publication of Why England Slept (1940), a book on foreign policy. He joined the United States Navy in 1941 and became an intelligence officer. After the United States entered the Second World War, Kennedy was transferred to the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron where he was given command of a PT boat.
Sent to the South Pacific, in August 1943, his boat was hit by a Japanese destroyer. Two of his crew were killed but the other six men managed to cling on to what remained of the boat. After a five hour struggle Kennedy, and what was left of his crew, managed to get to an island five miles from where the original incident took place.
Kennedy suffered a bad back injury and in December 1943 was sent back to the United States. When he recovered he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and became a PT instructor in Florida. After a further operation on his back he returned to civilian life in March 1945. For the next twelve months he worked as a journalist covering the United Nations Conference in San Francisco and the 1945 General Election in Britain.
In 1940 Kennedy graduated from Harvard University with a science degree. The same year saw the publication of Why England Slept (1940), a book on foreign policy. He joined the United States Navy in 1941 and became an intelligence officer. After the United States entered the Second World War, Kennedy was transferred to the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron where he was given command of a PT boat.
Sent to the South Pacific, in August 1943, his boat was hit by a Japanese destroyer. Two of his crew were killed but the other six men managed to cling on to what remained of the boat. After a five hour struggle Kennedy, and what was left of his crew, managed to get to an island five miles from where the original incident took place.
Kennedy suffered a bad back injury and in December 1943 was sent back to the United States. When he recovered he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and became a PT instructor in Florida. After a further operation on his back he returned to civilian life in March 1945. For the next twelve months he worked as a journalist covering the United Nations Conference in San Francisco and the 1945 General Election in Britain.
In 1960 Kennedy entered the race to become the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Kennedy won Democratic primaries in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Oregon, Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia. At the national convention in July 1960, Kennedy was nominated on the first ballot. He selected Lyndon B. Johnson, as his running mate.
On 22nd November, 1963, President John F. Kennedy arrived in Dallas. It was decided that Kennedy and his party, including his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Governor John Connally and Senator Ralph Yarborough, would travel in a procession of cars through the business district of Dallas. A pilot car and several motorcycles rode ahead of the presidential limousine. As well as Kennedy the limousine included his wife, John Connally, his wife Nellie, Roy Kellerman, head of the Secret Service at the White House and the driver, William Greer. The next car carried eight Secret Service Agents. This was followed by a car containing Lyndon Johnson and Ralph Yarborough.
At about 12.30 p.m. the presidential limousine entered Elm Street. Soon afterwards shots rang out. John Kennedy was hit by bullets that hit him in the head and the left shoulder. Another bullet hit John Connally in the back. Ten seconds after the first shots had been fired the president's car accelerated off at high speed towards Parkland Memorial Hospital. Both men were carried into separate emergency rooms. Connally had wounds to his back, chest, wrist and thigh. Kennedy's injuries were far more serious. He had a massive wound to the head and at 1 p.m. he was declared dead.
Within two hours of the killing, a suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested. Throughout the the time Oswald was in custody, he stuck to his story that he had not been involved in the assassination. On 24th November, while being transported by the Dallas police from the city to the county jail, Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby.
At about 12.30 p.m. the presidential limousine entered Elm Street. Soon afterwards shots rang out. John Kennedy was hit by bullets that hit him in the head and the left shoulder. Another bullet hit John Connally in the back. Ten seconds after the first shots had been fired the president's car accelerated off at high speed towards Parkland Memorial Hospital. Both men were carried into separate emergency rooms. Connally had wounds to his back, chest, wrist and thigh. Kennedy's injuries were far more serious. He had a massive wound to the head and at 1 p.m. he was declared dead.
Within two hours of the killing, a suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested. Throughout the the time Oswald was in custody, he stuck to his story that he had not been involved in the assassination. On 24th November, while being transported by the Dallas police from the city to the county jail, Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby.
Fingers were pointed at Dallas police after John F Kennedy was assassinated in the city, the declassified documents reveal. Those who believed the local force was behind the killing included Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev.And one FBI informant even named patrolman JD Tippit, who was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald 45 minutes after JFK died, as the President’s actual killer.
According to a note sent to agents, the source was told by an H Theodore Lee that “the president was actually assassinated by Dallas police officer TIPPIT”.
The informant said Lee got the information from several previously active members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
The note also said a week before the assassination Tippit, who was alleged to be the head of the right-wing John Birch Society in Dallas, and a third man – possibly Oswald – met in Jack Ruby’s nightclub.
Ruby shot Oswald two days after Kennedy’s assassination and died of lung cancer in 1967.
The two men had supposedly met in a Florida airport as part of a group heading to Cuba to “cut sugar cane” and were heard discussing “Big Bird” by an informant.
Lee would later tell the FBI that communist Oswald was somehow involved in the anti-Castro movements as well as the FPCC, which allowed him to see both “sides of the issues involved”.
Tippit was in his patrol car when he stopped Oswald as he walked down Patton Avenue in Dallas.
After talking to Oswald through the window, he got out and was shot three times with a .38 calibre revolver. An autopsy showed he then took a bullet to the right side of his temple as he lay on the pavement.
However, the suspicions about the Dallas police were not confined to the US. CIA notes of a May 1964 conversation with Khrushchev said the Soviet leader did not believe American security was so “inept” that the president could be killed without a conspiracy.
He believed the Dallas Police Department was an “accessory” to the assassination and the CIA source “got the impression that Chairman Khrushchev had some dark thoughts about the American Right Wing being behind this conspiracy”.
When the source said Oswald and Ruby were both “mad” and he “acted on his own... Khrushchev said flatly that he did not believe this”.
The Soviets also suspected then Vice President Lyndon B Johnson could have been behind the killing, according to one of the 2,891 newly released documents.
In a note from December 1, 1966, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover said he was aware a US mole in Moscow was saying the KGB was “in possession of data purporting to indicate Johnson was responsible for the assassination”.
It came as the Kremlin feared it would be blamed for the President’s death and face retaliation.
The details emerged in a message to the White House called Reaction of Soviet and Communist Party Officials to the Assassination of President John F Kennedy.
The declassified documents, containing more than 30,000 pages, have done little so far to silence conspiracy theorists who believe Oswald was a fall guy for a wider plot.
One document from 1975 contains a partial deposition by Richard Helms, a deputy CIA director under Kennedy.
The intelligence chief later became CIA chief to the Rockefeller Commission, studying unauthorised CIA activities in domestic affairs. Commission lawyers appeared to be seeking information on which foreign leaders might have been the subject of assassination attempts by or on behalf of the CIA.
A lawyer asked Helms: “Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or agent?”
But the document ends short of his answer. The papers also show Helms, who later served under the administrations of Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon , claim that Johnson used to say Kennedy’s killing was an act of foreign retribution.
Helms said in a deposition: “President Johnson used to go around saying the reason President Kennedy was assassinated was that he had assassinated President Diem.”
South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem was arrested and killed just weeks before Kennedy during a US-backed coup.
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